The ruling by U.S. District Judge George Steeh of Michigan that the health reform law is constitutional was welcomed by the Administration, but it's just the first battle in a long legal war.

Steeh, a Clinton appointee, ruled that the requirement for people to buy a commercial product, health insurance, is allowed under the Constitution's commerce clause, in that a refusal to buy drives up prices in interstate commerce.

The largest suit against the law, brought by attorneys general in 20 states, is being heard in Florida, where a hearing was held last month and a decision is due in December.

The first decision in the battle was actually made in August, allowing a suit filed by Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli to go forward. A decision is also expected there in December.

The Florida and Virginia cases are being heard by Republican judges.

All three suits are being defended by U.S. deputy attorney general Ira Gershengorn, who before joining the government had an active trial practice defending Indian tribes before the federal courts. So does that make Cuccinelli General Custer?

We may soon know. Whatever the legal arguments over the law, Republicans feel confident that because most federal judges are of their party they can win the way George W. Bush won the Presidency.

Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist since 1978, and has covered technology since 1982. He launched the Interactive Age Daily, the first daily coverage of the Internet to launch with a magazine, in September 1994.

Disclosure

Dana Blankenhorn has been a journalist, writer and part-time futurist for over 30 years.
At the present moment I run only a personal blog in addition to my ZDNet open source blog.
DanaBlankenhorn.Com has the subtitle The War Against Oil. In the past I have used it to write about political history, e-commerce, personal matters, some ideas related to open source, and The World of Always On, which is the idea of using sensors, motes and RFID to turn WiFi links into platforms for applications which live in the air.
My IRA account at Schwab holds a few tech shares, most notably some Intel and Applied Materials, but there are no open source companies in it. I don’t even own any CBS stock.